


Same to You

by corrupted_quiet



Category: South Park
Genre: Confessions, Drug Use, Festivals, First Kiss, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Marijuana, Music, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29975382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corrupted_quiet/pseuds/corrupted_quiet
Summary: Going to a music festival is typically just code for smoking a lot of weed in the woods. And it is for the guys, but a moment alone gives Kenny and Kyle an opporunity to say a few things they've hestitated on before. The air might not smell clear, but they can get a few things off their chests.Content warning for recreational marijuana use.
Relationships: Kyle Broflovski/Kenny McCormick
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	Same to You

Music festivals are not about music. They never were about music. No, since the beginning of time itself, music festivals have been about _getting high_. Why the elaborate cover? Because _going to a music festival_ sounds a whole lot classier than _going to toke up with a bunch of randos in the woods._ Well, not by a _lot_ , but every little bit counts.

Kyle can’t remember the name of this one—something gay like South-Stock or Lolapapark or Cockhella—just that it’s some semi-state semi-local thing, meaning the only bands playing are absolute nobodies who can’t get a gig anywhere else. There’s no genre uniting the performances, organisers instead allowing rock to follow country to follow metal to follow klezmer, because who the _fuck_ is here for the sound?

A thick herbal haze saturates crisp mountain air. Kyle takes a deep breath, inhales the mixtures of exotic strains, some smoked and some vaped, some store-bought and some homegrown, some bad excuses for grass and some bona fide _good kush_. It’s not the freshest scent by any means, but it relaxes him. And it reminds him to take another hit.

He slips a blunt between his lips, one he rolled himself during their prep session last night. Not his best work, and not even close to the best of the group. The skill levels are a little skewed, with Stan benefiting from his stoner father’s tutelage and Kenny possessing a natural proclivity for DIY substance use; at least Kyle can say he did a better job than Cartman. It’s a pretty low bar considering he couldn’t keep a single joint from unravelling, but it gave Kyle something to rub in his face on the drive over. Cartman kept deferring blame, constantly citing piss-poor supplies and the fluctuating humidity, though it wasn’t too long before Stan and Kenny joined Kyle’s refrain:

_‘Shut the fuck up, you fat piece of shit!_ ’

The spark-wheel of his lighter peaks from between the folds of the towel. Right now, it’s just Kyle and a lime BIC, saving their spot amongst the sea of terrycloth and canvas. Cartman peeled off a few acts ago when his munchies came on before his high even peaked. Kenny disappeared somewhere between whiny alternative and the wannabe grunge. Stan staggered away at the start of this song to take a leak in a more secluded bush. Normal Kyle would overthink the solitude, read so deeply into isolation that his head echoes Cassandran metaphors, existentialism to the utmost extreme.

Half-Baked Kyle, on the other hand, only cares about getting _fully baked_.

Two turns of the wheel— _flick, **flick**_ —ignites a slender flame. Tangerine dances, wispy tip tickling beige paper, its short life defined by kindling his spliff. Though the fire dies as someone on stage botches their guitar solo, it lives on in the smouldering cherry, in the hemp and the tobacco and the marijuana, in the smoke drawn by his lungs. He closes his eyes, relishes the mellow as it equalises his anxieties, overwrites his worries, invalidates his low self-esteem, replaces everything he hates about himself. It may be evanescent as the THC-pumped fog cast over this meadow, but he’ll take what he can get. Consider his vibe _checked_.

_“And here I thought dick was the only thing you sucked.”_

The grassroots cacophony muffles the voice, nearly drowns it out completely, though Kyle’s spent years picking up on the lowest familiar tones, separating the rustic thrum from the noise. Green flutters open, accompanied by a smooth exhale, smoke billowing from his nostrils and mouth. An ashen screen forms before him, Kyle forced to peer through a cloud of his own making. As grey casually dissipates, he gradually makes out figure, form, features: sun-kissed skin flecked with faded cinnamon specks, golden locks soft as ore artfully tousled in perpetual mess, eyes bluer than the bright and cloudless skies characterising summertime bliss.

_“Fuck you,”_ Kyle drawls out in a dragon’s breath. Dope might make people dumb, but Kenny makes Kyle dopey. Maybe that’s the same thing as dumb—hell, maybe it’s worse—but it’s hard to resist riding the high that puts the strongest strain of ganja to absolute shame.

A laugh and a smirk, Kenny offers a glimpse of slightly yellowed teeth. The cigarette tinge reminds Kyle of lightly buttered popcorn, fresh from a microwave bag, only the wafts of menthol tantalise more fiercely than diacetyl whiffs. Kyle takes another drag to take his mind off how they might taste.

Kenny flops down next to him in that time, one of his motions both fluid and clumsy, accidental and on purpose. He leans more on the klutzy side, bumping Kyle’s shoulder as he gets himself settled. No shock, considering the whites of his eyes are a Crayola _Tickle Me Pink_. Kyle wonders whether they’re sharing a crayon, or he’s picked a deeper shade from the box. He exhales feeling pretty _Razzmatazz_.

“So’d Stan get pissed off ‘bout the power pop ‘n leave?” Kenny never sounds _stoned_ ; he speaks with the air of wisdom belonging to gurus and sages who spend their whole lives meditating. Regular Kyle envies how he can mask inebriation so effortlessly. Toked-up Kyle can’t get over how hypnotic his voice is, mesmerising his mouth is, alluring his lips are.

Kyle blinks, once to register his surroundings, again to absorb Kenny’s words. Damn, maybe this joint has a little _too much_ ‘ _tegridy_. After a pause—how long, he doesn’t know—he offers a lackadaisy shrug.

“Nah, just had to piss,” It isn’t a joke, but he laughs like it is, like it’s one of those shitty ones that the comic sputters out between snickers only to realise on delivery it was a _lot_ funnier in his head. Yeah, Easy-Bake Broflovski definitely overdid the _‘tegridy_.

Kenny giggles a little too, because he’s an amicable audience, because laughter’s contagious, because they’re both high as balls. Kyle feels looser just listening, the notes hit by his chuckles in dulcet harmony. Not a single band in this line-up can compare.

Before Kyle lift the spliff to his lips, Kenny holds out his hand. He doesn’t grab the blunt from him—no, Kenny is consent embodied even with substances involved—but he does leave his palm open, ready, waiting. Kyle stares down at the request, momentarily tangled amongst lifelines and love-lines and whatever other hippie-dippie ridges make up a man’s skin. Kyle gets lost, though Kenny must assume he’s just contemplating, drawing things out to be a cheeky asshole for no reason. It takes a twitching pinkie to remind Kyle what he’s requesting, egg him on with subliminal signals, _sharing is caring_ or some shit like that.

Smoke comes out with a scoff. A playful one, because this whole damn concert is a judgement free zone, and Kyle always has trouble turning down a boy with a pretty face. He gives up the doobie with a roll of his eyes, “I thought you _hated_ handouts.”

Kenny smirks, lips pulling into some devilish curl, like Peter Pan outsmarting Captain Hook. He nails the boy-never-grown-up attitude flawlessly, “No one hates free weed.”

Kyle snorts, “Can’t argue that.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Kenny slowly inhale. When he takes a hit, he has an appreciative expression, like one of those connoisseurs of fine blends. He can taste the slightly damp paper, detect the hints of tobacco lightly sprinkled with Mary Jane, ponder how this strain balances whatever chemical ratio and somehow turn being a stoner into a goddamn artform. Or maybe the reefer is turning Kyle too much into the waxing poet, when really any other time he would flat-out admit to himself that he just thinks it’s _hot_.

Kenny blows. One solid exhale. A fluid, visible breath. As he licks over his upper lip, his eyes flicker to Kyle, one brief flash, and Kyle looks away.

A sneaky little _gotcha_ , that’s what it must be. Kyle tells himself that as he defensively trains his eyes forward. He focuses on someone on stage failing to twerk and/or floss, and hopes his cheeks didn’t betray him with an inebriated blush.

Kenny adjusts, leans forward, to the side. Kyle thinks for a second that his perception is fucked up, calibrated in all the wrong ways. He tells himself he’s imagining Kenny’s head move close to his, doesn’t believe it until he hears his voice almost right in his ear, _“That’s good shit.”_

When Kyle turns his head, his heart beats in his throat. And in his ears. And in his chest. The thrumming, drumming, pounding resounds through every part of him as he sees Kenny right there, his head hovering over his shoulder. Breaths in mingle with breaths out, make loops and tie knots, in the air and in Kyle’s own stomach. As almost an afterthought, Kyle ekes out a “Yeah…” 

The music is too loud for him to know how he sounds. Was it stutter? Was it shaky? Did his voice crack like he was going through puberty, or did he for the first time in his life manage a tone so soft no one could hear him? The uncertainty hangs as thickly as the stench, suffocating Kyle as his mind falls deeper, deeper into the fog of incomplete musings…

“Y’know I love you, Kyle,” Kenny says it so casually, so suddenly. It just pops out of his mouth, like it just popped into his head the moment before. No, the moment _of_. It comes out so natural yet feels so… randomly natural. Like it _shouldn’t_ fit… but it _does_.

“Yeah, dude,” This is a peaking high. It has to be, right? Kyle is so blasted he’s hearing things, or hearing things wrong, and the only thing he can do to not screw things up is stay neutral, “I do too.”

“No, I _love_ you.” Kenny insists. He persists. Something in his voice sends that message loud and clear, that even though he may not be in his right mind, he of sound mind. His tone has all the gravity and sincerity of sobriety, because these are words he’s thought about sober countless times, repeated again and again but just couldn’t say, _“Y’know?”_

Kyle does, but he has to be sure.

“You’re high.”

Kenny gets it.

“I always pussy out when I’m not.”

Kyle blinks. Now _he_ gets it. As many times as Kyle’s wanted to talk about his sappy gay feelings, Kenny has, too. They both went through the same motions—feeling the thing, wanting to say the thing, worrying about the thing, avoiding the thing—and it took a lapse of responsibility to allow a moment’s risk. Kenny knows confessing like this is the epitome of fucking dumb, but he’s made himself so desperate that he gave himself no choice.

After all that, it’s unfair to pretend Kyle is any better than him. If anything, he’s worse, because he didn’t say it first.

“So do I,” He surprises himself how calmly he says it, how cool and collected. It isn’t the reefer, he can’t give the plant all the credit. Kyle said it himself, admitted it aloud, and Kenny heard him too. And at this faggy fuck-all music festival—of all the damn places!

He doesn’t know who leans in first. Kyle moves, and Kenny closes the gap, lips joining together in a long, savoured draw. The heartbeat ebbs out, morphs into a warm and fuzzy feeling. Everything feels tingly, feels funny, feels like something out of a dream. That’s the drugs, he’ll concede, but there are some feelings, some raw and true, that he cannot attribute to buds and blazes.

But it’s still too much. It’s an interference. It’s a distraction. It’s not what all it can be, and not all it should be. After some length of time, some amount of kisses, Kenny draws back.

“Fuck,” He hates himself, hates the circumstances. Maybe in another setting, without the recreational encouragement; but right now, “We gotta wait.”

Kyle understands, “Until we’re not super stoned?”

“Yeah,” He lowers his eyes, gazing at the towel. He absently taps a little ash off the doobie, its presence so stupidly obvious, its influence ruining. As a frown forms on Kenny’s face, Kyle lifts his hand, gently cups his cheek.

“I’ll be here when you come down,” He couldn’t say _that_ before, but he can say _this_ first. In his palm, Kenny glows.

“Same to you, Easy-Bake,” He smiles, “Same to you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's been forever since I've posted something. Hell, this was supposed to be for K2 Week, but my life has been kinda messy. I'm trying to make more time to write, and spend a little more time writing. I hope that this is the start of me getting back in the habit, and others getting back to the joys of K2. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting. As always, I'll see you next story.


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